Gold and Silver
by Wends
Summary: Written for the Strifehart Kink Meme on Livejournal. Prompt: After the loss of his world and the loss of Rinoa, Leon promised himself he'd never fall in love again. Cloud is making this a very hard promise to keep.


Originally posted on Livejournal for the Strifehart Kink Meme. Leave it to a person like me to fill this one. Mwahahah. Oh, and mandatory disclaimer stuff: I don't own KH or anything in the FF franchise other than merchandise that's too irresistible for me not to blow my paycheck on; I'm just an E6 in the USN, and therefore am not worth sueing. Oh, and I couldn't use much of the prompt song in this; it's too upbeat for sadistic old biddies such as myself. Reviews, as always, are highly appreciated.

Prompt: After the loss of his world, and the loss of Rinoa (ohmigosh het?), Squall/Leon promised himself he'd never fall in love again.

Cloud, intentionally or not is up to anon, is making this a very hard promise to keep.

Bonus points if the line 'Pop goes my(/his) heart' can be used without making it cracky.

_-BEGIN FIC-_

Gold and Silver

I said I wasn't going to lose my head. I was going to keep my senses about me, to keep myself from going through the same pain and agony I'd felt so recently in my past. I was going to keep my focus, to keep myself on the straight and narrow and prevent another from breaking through my barriers.

I wasn't going to fall in love again. Every other time I'd allowed myself to delve into that luscious and warm emotion I'd been met with devastating circumstance and misery. Whether familial, platonic or romantic, love always was met with dire repercussion. It always ended in heartbreak and tears.

That was why I'd made that solemn promise so very long ago. I'd decided to never allow myself that luxury; love would be as foreign to 'Leon' as every event that shaped and molded 'Squall.' Not quite following in my previously laid footsteps to hide any and all emotions that I might actually feel and put forward a cold and indifferent mask, but rather to keep myself from falling into those deep and encapsulating emotions entirely.

In the past, I'd been naive. I'd felt that simply burying my feelings would protect me from the harsh world around me, so I'd let myself feel. I'd simply refused to emote those emotions that plagued me, embalming and entombing them forever in the depths of my heart, shielding them from the world with a wall of ice I'd thought would be impenetrable. Most people I'd encountered had strengthened my resolve in that belief – none of them had the patience required for digging through the barriers I'd erected so perfectly; none of them cared for the work required for what would likely be a miniscule payoff.

The young, impetuous princess who shined with such fervent life and strode into my life with unbending confidence despite her lack of worldliness broke through my shields so quickly and effectively that it left my head swimming in an ocean of disbelief. I had thought that by burying any emotional aspect of myself that I would be immune to its effects and distanced from the agony that always came with inevitable separation; she had proven me incorrect. She had shown me how burying emotions still left them present and burgeoning for recognition, still gripping my heart and soul with their strength despite any barricade I could think to enclose them in.

I'd always associated love with pain. Nothing had occurred to convince me of an alteration of that truth. It had hurt when Ellone was taken away from me at the orphanage, my only family being stripped from my life by strangers in the dark of night. It had hurt when adults from far off lands stole the other children I was being raised with. It had hurt when Matron, the woman I'd accepted as my mother in place of the mysterious woman who'd birthed me that I'd never had the opportunity to meet, had thrust me from her life and into the hands of a Garden to be trained as a mercenary and learn how to indiscriminately kill.

It had all hurt so much that I'd decided to lock my emotions away; those who saw them when I was a child either mocked me for them or pitied me and attempted to ease my pain by affiliating themselves with me. Those who tried to be my friend, who garnered any pittance of affection from my heart, met the same fate as everyone else in my past who had earned a place in my heart – they were taken from me, shuttled to other Gardens, other classes, other homes on other continents or simply removed by circumstance and fate. So I'd decided upon the path most likely to protect my battered heart from further damage; encasing my emotions in a shield of ice, keeping everything I felt to myself and protectively enclosed in a frozen casket far from anyone's ability to touch I found security.

I was lonely but I was safe.

My world was steel and jet. It was plain, lacking in true color or definition, a machination designed to be functional and nothing more. There was nothing shining and brilliant in it; it was without brilliance, and I had myself convinced that I liked it that way.

It wasn't until I'd met Rinoa that I'd discovered the fault in hiding emotions in a buried box; while those emotions were well hidden and sealed away, they were still present and available for anyone who had enough determination to seek them out. Those feelings, entombed as they were, could still be excavated.

And she'd succeeded in her task of freeing the love I had embalmed and resting in the recesses of my heart. She'd opened my soul to the beauty of love and the warmth of life once again. She was sapphire and diamond, beautiful and bright in my empty world.

Then she was ripped from my life.

So I had made my promise – I would not love again. I would leave behind the man who had felt so much that it had destroyed him as certainly as the Heartless had destroyed his world and his friends and his lover. Squall would die. Leon would never know the warmth of love. Leon would live his empty life, surrounded by warmth but not reciprocating it, offered friendship and letting it reflect from the mirror his heart had become.

I would be a friend. I would not let anything go deeper. I would be a defender. I would aid those in need.

But I would never again dedicate myself to anyone. I had dedicated myself to Rinoa; her causes became mine, her smiles were my treasures, her tears were mine to lift from her cheeks, her fears were mine to comfort and strip from her troubled mind. No one would ever have Leon as she'd had Squall. Leon became the personification of steel and jet. I wouldn't allow any other colors to come into his reality.

And then you come into my life.

You, with your empty eyes and your troubled spirit. You, with your agonizingly familiar shield of ice around your darkness-tainted heart.

You draw so many memories, troubling and miserable, from my mind. You remind me of a man I'd once known; you remind me of a man who had not wanted anyone to get to know him. Who had wanted to hide the emotive side of himself. You seem to hate it as much as he did, preferring everyone to know him as an unfriendly, introverted guy; it made it easier for him when people perceived him that way, after all.

You remind me of that man who would only confess such hidden fears and loathsome truths to an unconscious woman while carrying her to a distant nation upon his back in the desperate hope of waking her from a mystic comatose state no one could rouse her from.

Looking into your dead eyes with their mysterious glow, I almost want to dredge that dark past from its watery grave to relay the lessons I'd learned to you. No matter how hypocritical I might sound given my current promise, I wanted to show you the lessons she'd taught me; I wanted to show you the warmth I'd experienced when she'd shattered my frozen prison and drawn me into the heat of her loving embrace.

The others show you their friendship; the flower girl gives you her loving forgiveness for past failures. You shrug them away, preferring to keep yourself segregated. You maintain yourself within your protective ice casket, your heart hidden from everyone who looks desperately for it.

I should ignore you. I should keep my distance as you do. I should… else when you're inevitably stripped from my life as everyone else has been or is going to be, it will renew the cycle that killed Squall.

To be frank, I wasn't certain if Leon could handle it. Hence why I was determined not to love again; so that Leon couldn't be shattered in the same fashion.

But you came into my life, the reminders of what I was and who I'd been so stark and heavy that they pressed with indomitable force upon my thinly veiled attempts to maintain my promise. Without realizing it, you were giving me a goal in the empty life I'd crafted for Leon. You'd taken a life without direction or purpose and given it a focal point; freeing you from the prison Squall had been enclosed in for so long was steadfastly becoming my fantasy.

A twist of fate makes life worthwhile, it seems.

You haven't even looked my way with anything other than mild recognition of my presence in your eyes. You haven't been any spectacular addition to my life, and yet…

And yet you're shattering my promise, letting those emotions I'd thrust so far from myself that they couldn't be recognized as existing in my vicinity come back to me with vengeance. Their impact on me could almost be audible, striking with veracious smacks and thuds – pop goes my heart.

You don't seem to notice me, yet I can't stop watching you. Your golden radiance, caressed by silver accents and shining with light you can't recognize on your own, almost shine with visible radiance despite the darkness that plagues you. I can't help but be fascinated.

I try not to love, but without effort you are demolishing my vain attempts.

I should leave you to your own devices for my own safety. But I fear that these snuck glances, these fanciful imaginings and longings that surge in my soul won't allow me.

Despite the fear I hold of how I will break if you leave, I am determined to keep you close by. And I just can't let you go.

You are gold and silver.


End file.
